Everything You Need to Know About “La bola negra” before seeing it in theaters

What do you get when you combine a lost manuscript, a murdered poet, and a reckoning with the past and present of queerness? The result is Spain’s multigenerational gay epic La bola negra (The Black Ball). With sold-out showings across the country, the film has taken Spain by storm as the must-see movie of the year. Directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo—known affectionately as “Los Javis”—and written in collaboration with Spanish playwright Alberto Conejero, the film is already generating a buzz around the world after its Best Director win at Cannes this summer. I was lucky enough to see it in Granada, the city where famed Spanish writer Federico García Lorca lived and wrote some of the pieces that inspired the movie. Theaters were packed, multiple simultaneous showings were sold out, and it’s all anyone in Spain can talk about. I can confirm: it’s a masterpiece.

Even without any knowledge of Lorca, his work, or the Spanish Civil War, audiences will be blown away by the movie’s sweeping cinematography, heart-wrenching soundtrack, and masterful performances. But for those in the know, this film ascends to another level entirely. As a fan of Lorca to the point that I got a doctorate in Spanish and moved to Spain, I’m practically foaming at the mouth in my eagerness for the movie to be released worldwide. But what is the titular black ball, who is this Lorca everyone keeps talking about, and what’s he got to do with the movie? Ahead of the film’s international debut, here’s everything you need to know—spoiler free—to fully appreciate this gorgeous, groundbreaking queer film.

While La Bola Negra isn’t technically about Federico García Lorca, it’s safe to say that he is the heart and soul of the film. It’s hard to overstate how famous and beloved he is, not only by Spaniards, but also by audiences worldwide. The name Lorca is both sacred and controversial in Spain, evoking the nation’s most well-known writer who was assassinated by Franco’s fascist military at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Lorca was Spain’s most prolific poet and playwright, and his gayness was an open secret that put him in grave danger. He was only 38 years old when he was murdered in August 1936, leaving behind incomplete works of poetry, theater, and visual art that were at risk of being destroyed by the Falange. One of these incomplete works was a mere four pages of a play titled La bola negra, Lorca’s first piece to feature an openly gay protagonist. Sadly, his brilliant life was interrupted before he could finish it. Like many of his manuscripts, letters, and photos, La bola negra was swept up by Lorca’s community and hidden away from the fascist regime for decades. During Franco’s nearly forty-year regime, Lorca’s work was either banned or heavily censored, washing away all traces of his sexuality and his progressive political views. It’s only been since the 80s that Lorca has been read and studied authentically, leading to an explosion of work that has brought him back into the queer canon. Especially important was the emergence of his Sonetos del amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love), a collection of openly gay poems dedicated to his lover Rafael Rodriguez Rapún. Lorca’s work, life, and legacy forms the blood that runs through the veins of La bola negra, which tells the story of different gay Spaniards across three timelines in 1932, 1937, and 2017–all connected in some way through Lorca.

But why “la bola negra”? What does a black ball have to do with queerness, the Spanish Civil War, and generations of silence surrounding unhealed wounds? Everything, as it turns out. In Lorca’s unfinished play La bola negra, a young man named Carlos (Milo Quifes) is rejected from becoming a member of an elite casino because of his sexuality. The film takes Lorca’s incomplete manuscript as its main point of departure and tells Carlos’ story as one of the three timelines, this one set in early 1930s Granada. The titular black ball comes from a voting system of white and black balls: white for yes, black for no. Carlos isn’t Lorca, per se, but he certainly looks for all the world like a young Federico with his brooding eyes and dark hair parted in the middle. He can only watch in despair as one by one, black balls roll down a chute, accumulating in a line of damning spherical “no”s. Throughout the film, the black ball comes to represent the prohibition and rejection of queerness. Despite the fact that the play was never finished, the Javis did their homework. The dreamlike conclusion to the 1932 timeline takes inspiration from Lorca’s reported conversations with friends about his intentions for future scenes. The result is a stunning homage to what could have been, had Lorca’s life not been so brutally interrupted by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

The second timeline begins in the throes of this violence, a year after Lorca’s murder. Republican anti-fascist fighters struggled bloodily against Franco’s Nationalist forces for control of the country from 1936-1939, with other countries stepping in on either side in what effectively became the dress rehearsal for World War II. Lorca’s real-life lover, Rafael Rodriguez Rapún (Miguel Bernardeau), had joined the Republican side to fight against the fascist takeover and was gravely wounded in 1937. Rapún’s last days are reimagined in the 2015 play La piedra oscura (The Dark Stone), written by Spanish playwright Alberto Conejero López, who collaborated with the directors on the film. La bola negra blends historical fact with Conejero’s theatrical vision to tell Rafael’s fictionalized story from the perspective of Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente), a young gay man who has been conscripted to the Nationalist side against his will. The wounded Rafael and Sebastián meet at a military hospital after Rafael is captured and brought in for interrogation. Sebastián quickly falls for a man who should be his enemy. The two men connect over a poem that Rafael keeps in his pocket: one of Lorca’s sonnets, “El amor duerme en el pecho del poeta,” a beautiful poem that openly describes a romantic relationship between Lorca and Rapún. With his execution imminent, Rafael entrusts Sebastián with the poem and more, leaving a legacy of secrecy and pain that echoes throughout the years. While only parts of Rafael’s story are historically accurate, the trauma of the war and its lasting ramifications are as true as can be.

In 2017, a gay graduate student named Alberto López (portrayed by Carlos González, named in homage to Alberto Conejero) is working on his dissertation when he’s interrupted by a call. His grandfather has died, and has left Alberto a mysterious inheritance that intersects with the other two timelines. Through Alberto’s eyes, we see what has changed for queer men in Spain in the eighty years since Rafael handed the poem to Sebastián—and what hasn’t. To get too much into Alberto’s storyline would be to spoil a lot of the movie, so I’ll leave it there.

La bola negra is the kind of film that Spain has been waiting for, and one it desperately needs. Ninety years after Lorca’s assassination, his ghost, along with the ghosts of all the innocent victims of the Falange’s violence, continue to haunt Spain’s narrative. The legacy of the Spanish Civil War still remains to be contended with, especially as far-right political movements gain momentum in Spain and around the world. There are still teachers, tour guides, and other supposedly educated members of the public who wrongly insist that Lorca’s death had nothing to do with his sexuality, only fueling the dangerous ideas of a new generation of young people who idealize Franco’s regime. La bola negra is the Javi’s response to this continued erasure of the horrors of fascism, a response that splits open Spain’s blood-stained earth to reveal its foundation of bones. 

The film is a triumph and an elegy rolled into one, a poem that stretches across time. It’s already made waves, and will undoubtedly introduce Lorca and his art to new audiences. I like to think that Lorca has somehow witnessed the radical act of beauty that is La bola negra. While it may have been too late for Lorca and Rapún, for the countless Federicos, Rafaels, and Sebastiáns of today, the film confirms the essence of what it means to be alive, and what we’re still fighting to achieve: the right to live, and to love.